The invention presents a method and apparatus for avoiding collisions of moving vehicles in an environment, such as a warehouse, that utilizes a positioning system to track vehicle locations within a preconfigured operational zone. Automatically guided vehicles (AGVs) typically follow known paths (such as defined by a guidance wire embedded in the floor) in an operating environment and are controlled by an AGV server so that they do not collide with each other. However, when an operating environment utilizes both AGVs and manned vehicles, such as free roaming forklift trucks, the potential for collisions is exacerbated, since the AGV control system has no knowledge of the location, movement direction, or speed of the manned vehicles. The related application, WO2006/065563, facilitates the tracking of both the position and rotational orientation of manned vehicles. Manned vehicles equipped with the position and rotational orientation (PRO) system are referred to as “PRO equipped vehicles” or simply PROVs.
The problem of predicting possible collisions between unmanned vehicles such as automatically guided vehicles (AGV's) and manned vehicles (PROVs) such as free roaming forklift trucks and other mobile industrial equipment is addressed by the method and apparatus of the present invention.